Smoke alarms are utilized for detecting and warning the inhabitants of a home or other occupied location of the existence of smoke which may indicate a fire. Upon detection of the smoke by the smoke alarm, the device emits a shrill, loud alarm that notifies all individuals within the area that smoke has been detected and departure from the premises may be necessary.
While the smoke alarms are very effective at notifying individuals of the possible existence of fire that is generating the smoke, certain types of false alarm indications may often be very annoying to a user. These false alarms may be triggered, for example, by smoke generation within the kitchen during preparation of a meal. This may cause the creation of enough smoke that will set off the smoke alarm causing the loud, shrill alarm. In this case, a fire that is dangerous and out of control is not of concern to the residents so the loud, shrill smoke alarm will provide more of an annoyance than a benefit. Presently, there exists no method for easily discontinuing the loud, shrill alarm other than fanning the atmosphere in the area of the smoke alarm in an attempt to remove the smoke from the area that is causing the smoke alarm to activate or removing the battery or house power from the smoke alarm in order to turn it off. Removal of the power source may be difficult as smoke alarms are usually mounted upon the ceiling or other high area of the house or building to provide maximum smoke detection capabilities.
An additional problem with existing smoke alarms is the battery check or low battery condition. In smoke alarms that are powered by batteries, it is often necessary to periodically check the battery within the smoke alarm in order to confirm that the battery has sufficient charge. This often requires obtaining a ladder or chair for the user to reach the smoke alarm which has been placed in a substantially high location within the home or building to maximize smoke detection capabilities. The user is required to push a button that is located on the smoke alarm to perform a battery check. An audible signal is provided for an indication of whether or not the battery is in need of replacement.
An additional related problem relates to the low battery condition within a smoke alarm. When the battery reaches a low power condition, the smoke alarm will commonly beep at a low duty cycle of around once per minute. Unfortunately, this beep often occurs in early morning hours when the house temperature is at a minimum and these conditions maximize the low battery condition and increase the likelihood of an alarm. This is of course a most irritating time for this to occur. Additionally, the beep is very difficult to locate since the beep is short and a single high frequency tone. The beep is short to enable up to a week or more of low power battery alert on a mostly depleted battery. The alert transducer uses a single high frequency, typically around 3 kilohertz due to the need to produce a very high output from a small transducer which necessitates the use of a high frequency resonate transducer. Due to the reflections and use of half wavelengths shorter than the distance between the human ears, it is very difficult to localize the source which may present a problem since most homes normally include a number of smoke alarms.
Thus, there is a need to provide an improved method for temporarily mitigating an undesired activation of a smoke alarm and to provide battery check capabilities within the smoke alarm.